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Shipud writes "Raytheon has secretly developed software capable of tracking people's movements and predicting future behavior by mining data from social networking websites according to The Guardian. An 'extreme-scale analytics' system created by Raytheon, the world's fifth largest defense contractor, can gather vast amounts of information about people from websites including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Raytheon says it has not sold the software — named Riot, or Rapid Information Overlay Technology — to any clients. But the company has acknowledged the technology was shared with U.S. government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analyzing 'trillions of entities' from cyberspace. The power of Riot to harness popular websites for surveillance offers a rare insight into controversial techniques that have attracted interest from intelligence and national security agencies, at the same time prompting civil liberties and online privacy concerns."

And Twitter, Foursquare, and the rest of the so-called "social" web. Anyway, if they're interested in finding terrorists and whatnot, they should probably look elsewhere. If they're interested in picking up stuff to use against their own citizens (Stasi-style), then they're probably on the right track.

nyway, if they're interested in finding terrorists and whatnot, they should probably look elsewhere. If they're interested in picking up stuff to use against their own citizens (Stasi-style), then they're probably on the right track.

I see your latter point as a valid concern.

Hell, it seems these days, all you need are to claim something is to combat child pr0n or terrorism, and voila, you've now acquired the keys to the Constitution and can squash any old rights you used to have. Having more info on the

It's intended to gauge the sentiments of the masses, to warn the local rulers before the uprising starts. I'm pretty sure they have a pretty good market in the Middle East right now. It doesn't do anything about lone killers or terrorists.

This reeks of "schleppnetzfahndung", a term used to describe the use of similar data by the West German police to combat terrorism in the 70's. It did catch a couple of terrorists. It also got tens of thousands of citizens banned f

It also got tens of thousands of citizens banned from working in all kinds of jobs, because they had the wrong friends, read the wrong papers or were members of the wrong trade union.

If you can be stopped from working somewhere for any of those reasons, your society is fucked. It's not surprising West Germany had so many terrorists in the 1970s if the state was treating legitimate dissent so fascistically.

You're assuming that they need access to private data on Facebook to make this work. Between the lack of people fine-tuning their privacy settings, and the ability of other users to note what one is doing even if one doesn't share such information, and it's no surprise that they can develop this software.

Might be why no one has bought it yet. How many terrorists use four-square for check-ins (something called out by the article when talking about tracking) or social media at all? I guess the really dumb ones but still...

Espionage and surveillance work is done by diligence and pricing together bits of data to create an informative model. Every bit of evidential data or prediction narrows the filed of outcomes and increases the predictive capability and probability of the location and behavior even of an individual. Our courts work that way, bit by bit, and the bar for surveillance is much, much lower. No reasonable doubt stuff needed. With limited staff and resources, anything that narrows an individual likely locations and

yes but that is done by human officers working on suspects and not a ML/AI system analyzing a huge data set to pick out an individual - you could pick out candidates for humans to have a deeper look i can buy that but predicting individuals by its self (short of a singularity) i find a bit hard to believe

Just don't post location data or activities if you're engaging in protests... disable location services on your phone. You're giving data to a public database and then crying about privacy... just don't give them information.

Just don't post location data or activities if you're engaging in protests... disable location services on your phone. You're giving data to a public database and then crying about privacy... just don't give them information.

How can you be sure that everyone who's participating in that same protest followed your advice?

They don't need the information you post if they already have the information other people post about you.

It's not as simple as that. I saw a talk by a researcher a few months ago who discovered that Twitter posts could be used to predict spikes in crime. Basically, the example he demonstrated went something like this: when a lot of people are posting messages about being stuck in traffic, the probability of hit-and-run accidents increases. The researcher conjectured that the reason for this phenomenon was that drivers were taking detours, and that the combination of running late and being on an unfamiliar

It's not the protest itself that is secret, but the planning. The point of spying on activists before they stage a protest is to crack down on the protest, to spread propaganda just before the protest, to move important meetings away from the protest site, etc.

If you think that will help, you're clueless. And thus part of the vast majority and exactly the type this program targets. The only way to (probably) incapacitate the personal surveillance device (aka your cell phone) is to yank out the battery or better yet leave the whole god damn thing at home. Or never agree to carry one in the first place.

George Orwell will be saying "told you so". And Stalin will be drooling as this is his wet dream and something he always strived for but could never achieve.

If you're paranoid, you should most definitely have a cell phone and carry it with you most of the time, making the odd call, but conveniently "forget" it when you don't want to be traced by it. Not having a cell phone would be a lot more suspicious nowadays, the authorities would probably assume you had another secret one and go about tracing that.

Just don't post location data or activities if you're engaging in protests... disable location services on your phone. You're giving data to a public database and then crying about privacy... just don't give them information.

Indeed. Terrorists hide their activity from the authorities by concealing themselves within the populace. This is the first rule of asymmetric warfare. And it still holds, whether you are hiding within a city's population being surveilled by cameras operated by the authorities, or within the statistical bubble that the authorities are able to track via software like RIOT. The nature of the battles may change, but the nature of warfare doesn't.

I think anyone who posts stuff on twitter or facebook like "look there's a riot going on, let's go and join in and do some looting" deserves to get caught and sent to prison for stupidity. But that was effectively what happened during the riots here in the UK in 2011.

The raging paranoid in me says this is a Very Bad Thing that will end up with politicians refusing to relinquish power by passing laws arresting people for 'crimes' they might commit based on this statistical analysis, followed up by lists of new 'crimes' demanding 'harsh penalties' covered by these same new laws. Aggrivated littering and felony loitering, anyone?

Seems more like Person of Interest [wikipedia.org] realm, and that show feels a lot more like something that could exist today than flukey telepaths being born. (Great show by the way, starts of slow but gets going!)

Time for a forest and tree analogy. On a rounding basis, the masses have historically never done anything terribly exciting, important, or relevant. So paying intense attention to them is a waste of resources. Its always the 10% or less who actually influence history. If we made all predictions based on the median joe 6 pack couch potato, we'd still be british subjects, we'd still be in control of independent south vietnam, iraq and afghanistan would be fully pacified, blah blah blah.

I don't think that knowing 30% of the population liked the most recent american idol episode is actionable intelligence information in either the short, medium, or long term. Imagine a squad about to deploy on a mission in Iraq being told that the best help intel can provide today is that 15% of active facebook users like listening to Bieber. Umm, thanks guys, on to the next briefing.

Its a self blinding technology, not an enlightening technology. I'm sure its highly profitable for contractors of course.

Actually, having a crystal clear picture of what the Great Swarm is doing provides an exquisitely crisp background against which one can pick out very fine details indeed when it comes to excursions from that background.

It's the excursions that they're looking for and keeping a close eye upon.

As the detail of the background becomes sharper and sharper, so too does detail of the excursions.

But the excursions from the background are also not actionable data. Right back to my original example, OK the important part is not that 15% of the dirt villagers like Bieber, its that 85% actively dislike Bieber. Still not actionable because the subject of discussion is useless from a military tactical / strategic / logistic perspective.

I will say that you could see a meta-pattern of peoples behavior when they know they're being monitored. Like if you have people faking data, poorly, to make it look li

You know, for such an Orwellian sounding program, you'd think the marketing droids there would have picked a better acronym than RIOT. Like Worldwide Online Overlord Technology or something on the lines of that.

I pretty much do the same things every day at more or less the same time. I have Sunday dinner at the same restaurant and order the same thing. Give her a calendar an time of day and she could predict my movements precisely.

I pretty much do the same things every day at more or less the same time. I have Sunday dinner at the same restaurant and order the same thing. Give her a calendar an time of day and she could predict my movements precisely.

Just curious..why are you living your whole life stuck in such a rut?

That would be so boring to me...I rarely eat the same thing within a 3-4 week period.

Do you not crave some variety?

Not putting you down...but just curious. I'm not familiar with someone that would go to one restaur

Interesting question. I notice that I tend to optimize my daily experiences and then minimize deviation from those experiences, so that when I find my favorite dish in a restaurant, I rarely order anything else. For example, I get Sunday dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant where I've gone for 16 years or so. I'm in there at 4:30 almost every Sunday. I always get Pho Ga. The time works for me because that's when I get back from the lakehouse and I get back at 4:30 to beat traffic, yet extend my stay. The soup

At 55, I know what I like and how much I like it. Experimentation becomes less important than experience.

Thanks for the answer, interesting.

I find that I'm setting in my ways, somewhat in spite of myself.

As I'm aging, however, I'm actively trying to keep myself from doing that, and actively seeking out new experiences and new things best I can....hoping it keeps my mind younger and, hopefully, keeping from getting too close minded, and not to be yelling to 'get off my lawn' too often or too loudly.

Alternatively, I could say that if the only interesting thing in your life is that you eat different foods every day, you are living in a superficial bubble.

Well, I have some routine forced upon me, due to having to work for a living.

But outside of that, I do try to do something new and different as often as I can. I do think of food and cooking as HUGE part of my life, that I enjoy, so culinary speaking, I am always looking for new things to eat and cook.

I've often wondered about the programmers who write these software packages.

The stereotype programmer is young, bright, scientific, idealistic, and concerned for global issues.

And yet, big companies have no problem staffing teams to write the software for predator drones, Carnivore [wikipedia.org], Total Information Awareness [wikipedia.org], and other packages which are used to violate human rights.

Where do these "programmers of dubious character" come from?

Many programmers say (when I ask) that they have high moral standards - more so than (they say) the average person. And yet, they work on all sorts of sketchy things.

Can anyone explain the disconnect? Is there a level of "bravery" associated with morality (ie - I'm against *this*, but not willing to lose my job over it)? Are moral arguments here (for example) just blowing smoke?

Well, you have two data points. The existence of all sorts of software designed to take advantage of information easily available on the internet, and a 'feeling' that programmers possess some special moral character. The answer to this conflict is obvious.

The idea that programmers have some special moral character is nonsense.

A few years back, Raytheon recruited some of my friends by simply offering them 150% of their current salary at their current employer. That's difficult to say no to.

No, it's not. You either have a moral position towards something or you don't. If you think Raytheon are immoral, you shouldn't work for them. If your ethics can be bought by a pay rise, you are an unethical human being,

I agree that it is almost impossible to say "I don't believe in capitalism and the industrial-military complex, therefore I refuse to work for any sort of organisation that upholds that system" but there is still a difference between a company that makes widgets that may be used in cons

If we rephrase your question into "Why do people obey when they get ordered to do bad things?" then this TED talk by Philip Zimbardo [ted.com] may explain some of the core problems with that (although it obviously shows much more extreme cases, sometimes even hard to watch.)

Robert Oppenhiemer was horrified by what he helped create. I assume during working on it, he justified doing so due to the goal of defeating a force of evil. I assume the current generation of worker bees think the same way. Or they're just jingoistic sociopaths.

I've often wondered about the programmers who write these software packages.

The stereotype programmer is young, bright, scientific, idealistic, and concerned for global issues.

And yet, big companies have no problem staffing teams to write the software for predator drones, Carnivore [wikipedia.org], Total Information Awareness [wikipedia.org], and other packages which are used to violate human rights.

Programmer, meet money and security. Plus great benefits. And a great resume builder with the possibility of being cushy for life.Or... take your chances in the slave mines with other people and hope you don't get downsized at 35.

That's my guess.

or they just realize that if they pass on it someone else will just do the job instead

Yeah, whenever I see I story like this I wonder to myself "How the hell can anyone work on this stuff and still sleep at night?" Either A. they don't realize that they're an active part of making the US a hellish dystopia, or B. really don't give a fuck about the world tomorrow and just want to get paid today.

If you do not have accounts on any social networking site, such as Facebook, Myspace and their ilk (/. excluded), does it flag you as subversive?
What are the prediction parameteres for those of us that shun most of the social stuff...just a thought.

It's just totally follows logically to think through what you could get if you would exploit just everything that people allow to leak online if you don't have to even LOOK as if you're caring for privacy or anything.

Seriously, it would be strange if something like that wouldn't exist. And of course as always YOU just need to be more cunning than THEM.

"says it has not sold the software..."
What a bunch of bull. Raytheon NEVER, EVER develops software just for fun. They must have had a contract by Big Bother before they wrote a line of code or paid a single programmer.

there's an opportunity for anybody with some capital behind them to make an absolute killing selling phones that have no paper trail. cash or bitcoin. kind of like a legal black market.

kim dotcom? he's got reason to want to anonymize people again.

dissident activity requires anonymity. intel agencies should be worried that the path they are taking is going to force protest into a state that simply cannot be traced back to individuals. it's not too difficult to achieve, and if people follow simple rules

Of course they crawl & analyze Slashdot! Probably directly tap the DB, too. No doubt have been doing so for years. Bet there are some pretty cool algos crunching away on our posts. The surveillance state is the present not the future.

My approach is, try not to make any political comment on/. that I wouldn't be okay saying in public on the steps of City Hall. It is after all a public forum. I don't use an pseudonymous username, because I'm confident my actual identity would be discoverable regardl